Philips Is Revolutionizing Urban Farming With New GrowWise Indoor Farm

Kristine Lofgren writes: With arable land dwindling and the cost — both economically and environmentally — of growing and transporting food increasing, it's time to redefine farming. So Philips is creating a revolution with their new GrowWise indoor farm, which uses customized 'light recipes' in high-tech cells to grow plants that don't need pesticides or chlorine washes, and use a fraction of the water that traditional farming requires. The system can churn out 900 pots of basil a year in just one square meter of floor space, and bees keep things humming year-round for farming that is truly local, even in the middle of a city.

Comments

lettice under LED grow lights?

[Karmashock]

... This is what passes for innovation? Go to youtube and you'll see an endless procession of pot growers that have been doing that since always.

I'm a big fan of urban farming but... the real trick with that is going to be using the "sun" to grow stuff.

Part of the issue is that buildings are not built to grow things. And to really do proper urban farming, they have to either be modified or built from the ground up with that in mind.

So... green houses on the roofs of buildings would be one thing to think about. Large insulated ground to ceiling windows facing south in the northern hemisphere and north in the southern hemisphere... with the idea that the whole sun facing portion of every building be filled with plants.

Permaculture is something that has to be looked at and ideally looked at from the context of urban gardening. Most food producing plants are bred for maximum production with maximum sunlight. Often an urban farm is going to have less than perfect sunlight or be outright shaded. And that has to be taken into consideration with the sorts of plants you choose to plant.

Then you've got hydroponics... which is a great idea for indoor farming because you have fewer issues with insects and can control things a little more tightly.

Etc. This product they're thinking about selling... I can't see anyone outside of some government goofball on expense account buying this thing.

Re: So does this qualify as 'organic'?

[Applehu Akbar]

You can plant any seeds you want in one of these, Monsanto or otherwise. The real problem is that as soon as you walk out of Home Despot with one of these kits, the DEA will will be following you home to shoot your dog, slam your kids into foster care, and steal your cash. You know, just in case there might be anything suspicious about your choice of seeds.

Re:So does this qualify as 'organic'?

[Okian Warrior]

So, I'm all for grow local, but when there's sun shining right outside - this doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense to me... unless you are a company that sells grow lights.

You have a point, but you also have to consider the context of comparison.

Plants grown outdoors face an array of problems that the farmer has to account for. Keeping insects off, keeping weeds at bay, keeping the plants watered and fertilized - all this comes at a cost to the farmer.

Indoor farming requires a more expensive infrastructure (the building, trays, and plumbing) but has great savings in some of the other areas. It's easier to keep weeds and insects out, for instance.

Of particular note, outdoors you can't recycle unused water or fertilizer, but this can be done indoors. Collect any unused water after the plants have drunk their fill, remove waste products, top off the fertilizer, and reuse.

So the economic question is this: is the extra money/effort spent on generating light compensated for by the savings in insecticides, roundup, fertilizer, and water?

I think the answer is probably "yes", given that LED lights are incredibly efficient. (Also of note: less of the environment is damaged by excess fertilizer and water drainage. Damaging the environment indirectly costs money.)

Then the next question is with the building: does it make sense to have big windows and use mostly solar light, and adjust as needed with indoor lighting?

Windows cost more than walls, they require extra heating and/or air conditioning, they're not as structurally sound, and the light isn't used efficiently in the 3-d volume; meaning, you can't grow corn on each story of a 5-story building, because the first layer will shade the ones below it. (And windows break, they have to be cleaned, they tend to leak, &c.)

It may be more economically sensible to grow corn in a 5-story warehouse close to a city simply because it reduces the transport costs. It also reduces the amount of land used - allowing more plots to go back to the wild.

And on top of all of this, researchers I've talked to are doing clever things with the light recipe they're giving to plants.

Some plants detect the reddening of the sun and "go to sleep" at sunset. By adjusting the light color, you can keep the plants growing 18 hours a day and then blast them with excess red light to get them to quickly go into night mode. This increases yield by reducing the growing period of their crops.

(A bunch of other experiments are really interesting, such as: hitting the crops with a particular frequency of light to cause their ripening flavors to go into overdrive, making a crop that is inordinately tasty.)

So in summary, we should do the economic experiment and see if it's viable, but in toto there's a lot to recommend indoor industrial gardening.

Philips isn't doing anything new.

[Khyber]

I love how slashdot sucks up to Philips advertising while forgetting their very own denizens that have been doing this LONG BEFORE Philips got into the game.

Let me tell you why the Philips system is a bad idea:

1. Of the Philips lighting I've tested - EVERY PIECE WAS FALSELY ADVERTISED. Under-specced in every aspect.
2. Of the Philips lighting I've had custom-specified - THEY STOLE MY LIGHTING BLENDS. Your heavy-blue lighting regimen for most leafy greens came directly from me, while everyone else was doing red-heavy lighting.
3. Philips has been trying to play the finance game with their lighting systems - dead giveaway to scams is when you need to finance something.
4. I've caught Philips fucking over two other clients so far, and I expect to find that they have fucked over several others as soon as that lighting that was sent to them gets shipped to me and dissected.

Do not get Philips LED lighting. They've been playing games with me and other people in the horticultural industry, stealing our ideas and designs.

Slashdot supports outright thievery with the publication of this 'article.'

Re:Nothing new

[Khyber]

I can guarantee you Philips hasn't been tuning shit. They've been stealing the wavelength blends from other people.

I could probably churn out more than 900 pots of basil (a pot being one container large enough to hold a multi-seeded rockwool cube.) In one square meter using an NFT system, you could easily fit 100-120 pots. 4-5 weeks until harvest time, 900 or more per year per square meter is typical.

I built a building in Texas that can do 3,000+ heads of lettuce PER DAY. 20 foot by 60 foot.

I can even do most of your 'superfood' grass crops without light at all.